Kostnadseffektivisering av operativt inköp i ett enstycks- och kundorderstyrt tillverkningsföretag. : En fallstudie vid ABB Motors and Generators.

The global market of today demands high effort from companies to locate its available resources within the business to achieve highest efficiency possible. Supply Chain Management has the last couple of years grown in importance for companies to gain success in achieving overall efficiency in the company as a whole. Total cost of ownership is a tool to be used to obtain an overview of the total costs, direct as well as indirect, and therefore not only costs associated with the production. When investigating a company’s costs, it is of importance to gain insights and streamline the purchasing, due to that the purchase department stands for the majority of a company’s total costs.ABB Motors and Generators in Västerås, the case study object, is a local business unit within ABB Ltd. group, a company that started up in 1883 but took its present form in 1988. ABB Ltd is a global leader in power and automation technologies and at the case study object ABB, electric motors and generators are produced to clients around the globe. The case study object is an engineer-to-order (ETO) company where every single order is custom made according to clients’ specifications. The high complexity of each order puts high pressure on qualitative machine construction and its components. The latter is often the reason to weeklong lead times from the purchase until the materials arrive in house. The difficulties in managing the operative purchase within an ETO-company has created musings regarding how the operative purchasing department can work as cost-efficient as possible. The purpose of the study is to investigate and enable a description of how operative purchase is to be handled to increase its cost-efficiency. Due to ABB’s single-unit production, where the main construction, purchase and production are done first when the orders are confirmed, it is important to gain understanding about the factors affecting such a production and later also its cost-efficiency.The study shows that purchasing within an ETO-company is complex and it affect several parties, internal as external. The production is capital intensive and each order is handled in project form with the client in focus. The customization of each project obstructs the possibility with stockholding and forecasting. The purchasers often work under time pressure which means that correct quotations are not always executed. To use the personnel’s time correctly is cost-efficiency, simultaneously as the material shall have correct quality and arrive according to plan. The study shows that cost-efficiency increase if the operative purchase department lays its focus on material rather than clients. However, the change of focus results in change of how communication and information are handled and shared between parties. A frequently used, updated and reliable computer system support is required. With extended focus on suppliers at the purchase department the possibilities of improved dialog with the suppliers is enhanced. The proactive work with forecasts can also be conducted in a greater extent.The main recommendation to ABB is to restructure the operative purchase department to enable greater focus on suppliers rather than clients. With work tasks divided by supplier and material groups, the purchasers are separated from the project group which must be replaced by a well functional and manageable computer system to enable continues flow of information between parties. The purchase process with project specific purchases should be reviewed to grasp possibilities to enable purchases made independently from projects. This can result in advantages such as economies of scale, greater filling ratio on transports and reduced administrative costs.Validerat; 20140616 (global_studentproject_submitter